After months of speculation, activist shareholder Nelson Peltz, ower of the Trian Partners, said he wants PepsiCo to split its beverage and food businesses and buy Oreo cookie maker Mondelez International (MDLZ) to create a major global snacks company.

PepsiCo has been emphatic in its response – No! In an appearance today on CNBC, CFO Hugh Johnson reiterated the comapny’s lack of interest. In an apparent dig, he said:

You will hear people occasionally advocate for that kind of a transaction. The thing you need to look at is what are their percentage holdings of Mondelez and what’s their percentage holdings of PepsiCo. More often than not, it is someone who has a bigger stake in Mondelez.

For the quarter ended June 15, PepsiCo said it earned $2.01 billion, or $1.28 per share. That’s up from $1.49 billion, or 94 cents per share, in the year-ago period when its results were hit by one-time charges as a result of a deal to expand distribution in China.

PepsiCo is often compared unfavorably to Coca-Cola (KO) to which it has lost market share in recent years. But while Coca-Cola is focused entirely on drinks, PepsiCo now gets about half its revenue from snacks and other food.

Peltz says PepsiCo’s snacks unit is being overshadowed by its underperforming drinks unit.

In response, PepsiCo, which makes Gatorade, Tropicana and Frito-Lay chips, attributed the quarter to its mixed portfolio. Higher prices and higher volume helped lift revenue for its Americas food division, its biggest division by sales. Revenue in Europe, Asia, the Middle East and Africa also saw gains, helped by stronger volumes.

The Americas beverage unit, however, remained a drag.

“It looks like Fritos is finally back on track,” says Mike Foss, a portfolio manager with Brown Advisory referring to the snack food unit’s subpar grwoth during recent quarters.

A marriage between PepsiCo and Mondelez has been the subject of speculation since March when it was revealed that Peltz had invested $2 billion in the companies. And while regarded by some investors as a “good idea,” it is no small deed to to integrate two companies.

“There are some interesting reasons to get [Pepsi and Mondelez] together, but it is always much messier in parctice than putting some numbers on a spread sheet,” says Brown Advisory’s Foss.

At the time, Barron’s editor Andrew Bary wrote that a merger could add $9 to Pepsi shares, and makes sense. (See “Follow Up,” March 25, 2013, second item, and “How to Play the Kraft Spinoff,” Sept. 29, 2012, subscription required.)

Barrons.com wrote favorably about Mondelez in March (See Weekday Trader, “Mondelez Has Ingredients for Success,” March 7, subscription required). Since then, the stock has climbed 7%.

Kraft officially became two publicly traded companies after the close of trading on Monday, with one company called Kraft Foods Group (KRFT) consisting of the North American grocery business, and the other, called Mondeléz International (MDLZ), including global snack food brands.

So far this afternoon, KRFT is up 3.8% while Mondeléz is down about 0.7%.

Kraft’s biggest draw is probably its dividend yield — a tasty 4.5%. But Jefferies analystScott Mushkin thinks that there’s more to the stock, even though it’s in a slower-growing market than Mondeléz. He initiated coverage at Buy.

“Indeed, Kraft’s long term mid-to-high single digit EPS growth target appears quite attainable due to management’s simple, yet effective strategy of marrying a ‘good, better, best’ brand positioning and focus on improving operational efficiencies to financial goals of driving higher ROIC and cash generation. This should result, we believe, in better than expected rev. and EBITDA $ generation over time, helping propel both EPS as well as further increases in the already substantial $2.00 dividend.”

That said, Barron’s Andrew Bary noted this weekend that the stock is trading at about 17 times 2013 earnings estimates, which seems rich compared to competitors like General Mills (GIS) and Kellogg (K), which trade between 14 and 16 times.

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The blog is written by Ben Levisohn, a former stock trader who has covered financial markets for the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg and BusinessWeek.